By Nathanael Check
Columnist
At the center of every civilization is the need to survive, and not just survive, but flourish. Every culture has its unique way of raising animals and cultivating food.
In ancient times, agriculture was not as easy as it is nowadays. Civilizations such as Sumer, Mesopotamia and Persia had to employ a large percentage of their population to sustain their agricultural efforts.
What these civilizations had in common was resourcefulness. Take Persia, for instance.
The ancient Persians developed underground canals so that their water would not evaporate as quickly.
Advancements such as this were what defined whether a civilization would flourish or collapse. All three of these civilizations had their own way of adapting to their surroundings and agriculturally thriving.
For this article, however, I will focus on the incomparable Sumer. Sumer was a civilization that made its home in modern-day Kuwait from circa 4500 B.C. to circa 1900 B.C.
Like many civilizations of Sumer’s time, the civilization grew wheat and barley as well as chickpeas, lentils, dates, onions, garlic, lettuce, leeks and mustard. Being in such a dry environment, Sumerians had to find ways to farm without their crops drying up.
Their solution was the world’s first large-scale irrigation system, which included canals, shadoofs, wells, channels, dykes, weirs and reservoirs. This man-made irrigation was not only good at supporting life in Sumer but was also good at preventing major flooding.
Despite having what was – at the time – the most advanced irrigation system, Sumer still had to dedicate itself to farming to survive. Over 90 percent of Sumer’s total population was involved in some sort of agricultural occupation.
Nowadays we are so advanced that less than two percent of the world population is involved in some sort of agricultural occupation.
The Sumerians raised cattle, sheep, goats and pigs for them to eat and utilize. Sumerians used labor animals to help them with hard tasks, such as plowing fields and milling grain.
Something special they used their cattle for was weed killing. After spring floods, Sumerian farmers would take their cattle out on the fields and let them stomp all over the soil, which they believed killed weeds in the area.
Although Sumerians were advanced animal raisers, they simply did not have enough food to raise a sufficient number of animals, so they had to go out and hunt for wild game.
Between harnessing animals for labor, creating a massive irrigation system and hunting and fishing, Sumerians had created for themselves a stable economy.
From this stability came urbanization and cuneiform, the world’s first written language.
By conforming to the land around them and developing their own ways of cultivating land and using animals, Sumer was a successful civilization for almost 2,600 years!